Bonum Certa Men Certa

Warning: EPO Surveillance May Have Just Gotten Even More Intrusive

Reporters Without Borders on BlueCoat
Source: Reporters Without Borders



Summary: BlueCoat, which the EPO uses to enable oppression inside its European premises, has just gotten even nastier and staff may be at risk

LAST year we wrote about BlueCoat's relationship with the EPO. Some people already know about this, but some do not. BlueCoat is (or at least was) used to spy on EPO staff and censor EPO staff, as we first suspected quite a while back (this was later confirmed to us). We gave some background regarding BlueCoat at the time. It's militarised, just like Control Risks. There are many militaristic elements to the EPO under Battistelli and it's getting worse over time, to the point where one paranoid man in a suit has half a dozen bodyguards, costing a fortune.



"There are many militaristic elements to the EPO under Battistelli and it's getting worse over time, to the point where one paranoid man in a suit has half a dozen bodyguards, costing a fortune.""Please spread this really bad news which I read on Twitter," wrote to us one person earlier today. It's a reliable source.

"BlueCoat," we're told, "the company making TLS MitM equipment allegedly used by govs [AND EPO] to violate human rights, now has a REAL UNRESTRICTED CA."

"Please spread this really bad news."

"BlueCoat is used by the EPO to filter web traffic (at least it was in 2013/2014)," our source told us. This is something that we were able to verify independently. "From now on all these people (bastards) can intercept (as Man-in-the-middle, MitM) and read (possibly) without that you even notice also https:// traffic because your browser will trust them, because they have a real unrestricted certificate -like your bank, and so on.Please spread this really bad news.

"Here are some links."

https://twitter.com/FiloSottile/status/735941957130817536?lang=de

https://twitter.com/FiloSottile/status/735940720931012608

https://twitter.com/kennwhite/status/735956084574326784

This now-deleted tweet said: "network interception device manufacturer granted a Certificate Authority able to MitM HTTPS on any computer."

"Remedy," we're told, "partially, but perhaps not for unlucky sheep in the office," is this. "Here's how to untrust it," apparently believes our source, although that in itself may arouse suspicion from within the Office. This may have gone on for quite some time because, to quote the blog post: "This month an interesting one popped up, generated apparently in September 2015: "Blue Coat Public Services Intermediate CA", signed by Symantec. (No certificates signed by this CA have reached the CT logs or Censys so far.)"

Staff representatives of the EPO, albeit besieged and suppressed, might wish to report to European authorities which kind of parties the EPO is associating itself with. Under Battistelli, in the widely notorious Eponia, human rights are respected no more than in Bahrain.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Richard Stallman (RMS) Talk in Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress Will be Remote
This past week RMS received lots of accolades online
Links 28/08/2025: Chatbots Distorting/Fabricating History and Also Driving Suicide
Links for the day
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Resists Software Freedom, Even by Attacking Its Own
The OSI is compromised
 
Links 28/08/2025: Greenland 'Interferences' by US and Skinnerboxes to Get Banned in Korean Schools
Links for the day
The Register MS (Run by Microsoft Operatives): Free Software is Putin, Hence Evil and Dangerous
The current editor in chief is an American Microsofter, the previous one went to work for Google (US)
Gemini Links 28/08/2025: Back in Japan and Why "Hacker News" Sucks
Links for the day
A Much-Needed Wake-up Call to Users of Wordpress.com, Blogspot, Substack and All Those Other Outsourced (and Centralised) Platforms
There are several lessons in there
The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, Slopfarms in Google News, and More
Some readers of ours end up sending us links that are from slopfarms, not realising those are slopfarms
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Katrina Memories and Google Versus Software Freedom
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Police Against Media Freedom in the UK, Energy-Hungry Countries Targeted by China
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows Fell to All-Time Lows in Egypt This Summer, Vista 11 Adoption Decreases While GNU/Linux Increases
Vista 11 is going down rather than up
Links 27/08/2025: Microsoft Demoralises Staff With Slop Demands, Leaving Mastodon Explained
Links for the day
12 Hours Ago The Register MS Published a Fake (Paid-for) Article, But This One for a Change Did Not Promote a Ponzi Scheme
There are also Free software alternatives, but they don't pay The Register MS for "synthetic" so-called 'journalism'
More People Need to Call Out and Put a Stop to Serial Sloppers
Unless slopfarms are stopped, people will read and share Microsoft propaganda made by chatbots
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Headphones and Tartarus
Links for the day
Morale at Microsoft is Terrible (Proprietary Plagiarism Machines Have No Future, LLM Slop is a Bubble)
The slop sceptics/critics are going to have lots of "told you so" moments
GNOME "governance issues, staff reduction, etc." amidst Albanian whistleblowing and women trafficking
Notice the connection to Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and GNOME
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 26, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 26, 2025
Richard Stallman (RMS) Was Right About "Sideloading" in 1996
We now have computers that treat booting GNU/Linux like an act of "Sideloading"
Panama: Windows Down From 97% "Market Share" to Less Than 30%
In 2009, Windows was measured at 97.24% (compared to 62.32% right now or less than 30% if one also counts Android)
The UEFI 9/11 - Part I - Introduction to Impending Catastrophe (Microsoft Preventing People From Booting Non-Windows Systems)
eight-part series
Why Techrights is Slow Today (Bot Floods)
We don't know if those bots are connected to LLMs (we have not checked), but that is a possibility
Slopwatch: DDoS Slop, LinuxBSDos.com Spam, and Slopfarms in Google News, Including webpronews.com
Among the news we also found fakes, albeit not so much today
Links 26/08/2025: "Ballooning Debt" in France and "Transnational Repression in the UK"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/08/2025: Listening to Alcest and Google Doing Evil (Users Installing Software is "Sideloading" and Prohibited)
Links for the day
Links 26/08/2025: DNS Tampering and TikTok Layoffs
Links for the day
Microsoft's Windows "Market Share" Overestimated
Microsoft's income sources are shrinking
We Shall See...
My wife and I are hardly the first victims of Brett Wilson LLP
This New Determination on a Case Echoes the Modus Operandi of Microsoft's Serial Strangler vs Techrights (Its Online Decision/Judgment Says Truth and Public Interest Defend the Publisher)
Noel Anthony Clarke hopefully has enough money left to pay his victims, which include the publishers
Going Offline
There was life before the Net
The Register MS Has Apparently Shut Down Its Office
It is basically a fake address on the face of it
There Are Also Expectations of IBM Layoffs Very Soon With "Narrative Control."
Some of them mention Red Hat and how IBM failed to achieve anything substantial with that acquisition
After at Least Two Rounds of Mass Layoffs in August Microsoft Said to Have "September Layoff Confirmed - Performance Based"
Those "M5 level meetings" sound plausible
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 25, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 25, 2025